Erik is a baseball fan who has been attending baseball games and snagging baseballs regularly since 2008.

8-6-09 PNC Park

Today, I was the first one in to the left field bleachers. I had the whole area to myself for at least sixty seconds. However, there were no Easter Eggs, and no home runs sailing into the bleachers. Alas, I failed to get any balls during the Pirates portion of batting practice.

When the Diamondbacks came out to hit, I disappeared for a moment underneath the general admission bleachers to change. However, I realized that I had left my Diamondbacks shirt at home. I had taken it out of my bag last night so it wouldn’t get all wrinkled, and neglected to re-pack it today before I left. I was grumbling at myself for being an idiot for a good part of the D’backs BP.

The crowd today was 17,000 – which doesn’t seem like a lot. Unfortunately, during batting practice, fans managed to clog up all of the rows in the bleachers. Most sections in the bleachers are only six rows deep, so once 5:30 rolls around, and all of the non-season ticket holders come in, it gets pretty jammed up. It just takes one person to block a whole row. Most people who come to batting practice just stand there and only react when a ball is hit right at them.I’d prefer to always have a row open to my left and my right. Today, it didn’t matter though, as I couldn’t move after any balls anyway due to my extremely slow-in-recovering back.

I did manage to snag two balls during the Diamondbacks portion of batting practice. They were both in left field, and they were both with the glove trick.

I went to right field and center field during BP, but was shut out there as well.

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